


Netflix presents Richie Tozier: Don't Call My Boyfriend Gay

by kyaticlikestea



Series: Richie Tozier is famous and loves his boyfriend, OK [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Bisexual Eddie Kaspbrak, Comedian Richie Tozier, Coming Out, Everyone Is Alive, Fix It Fic, Gay Richie Tozier, M/M, Richie Tozier's Stand Up Act, and then i HAD to stay up until 1am to finish it, it would have been rude not to, look i accidentally wrote half of this on a bus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 03:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21219578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyaticlikestea/pseuds/kyaticlikestea
Summary: You know, when I first told my manager I was gay, he was like, "is this a bit?" Like, I'm so dedicated to my career, I've started a relationship with another man and now he's saved as 'Dream Boy' on my phone just so that I can expand my comedic repertoire. So obviously, I was like, "no, it's not a bit. I have not spent all morning on my knees just so that I get to make a blowjob joke on stage later." And then he hung up on me.A transcript of the first taped performance of Richie Tozier's comeback show, in which jokes are made, the queer experience is dissected, and wigs are snatched. Whatever that means.





	Netflix presents Richie Tozier: Don't Call My Boyfriend Gay

**Author's Note:**

> Tw: homophobic language, slurs, mentions of homophobic violence (nothing that isn't much more explicit in the IT Chapter Two film, but worth pointing out that it's in here)

**[Transcript of Richie Tozier's taped Netflix special, _Don't Call My Boyfriend Gay_, recorded November 25th 2018]**

_[the lights go up; Richie Tozier walks from the wings onto the front of the stage to audience applause. He positions himself in the centre of the stage with the mic stand in front of him. He's wearing a truly obnoxious yellow shirt with dogs on and black jeans. The audience whoops and cheers as Richie waves to them, then removes the mic from the stand and steps forward.]_

Wow. There’s a lot of you. I think they call that rubbernecking, don’t they? Like when you’re driving and you go past a car crash, and you slow down just a little, kind of crane your head out of the window, gleefully whispering to yourself, “ooh, I hope I don’t see any blood or oozy bits... sure hope I don't see the visceral remains of Bitchy Karen from HR!" when actually you’re totally on the lookout for, like, intestines and a severed limb. Maybe a head or two. Anyway, that’s why you’re all here, right? My famous car crash performance. Well, you could’ve saved yourselves 30 bucks. The whole thing is available for free on YouTube. My favourite version is the one that someone’s put to the Benny Hill soundtrack. Honestly, that person deserves some kind of award for managing to make that performance even slightly funny. Maybe I should hire them to score all my old sets. _[laughter; someone whoops.]_

Anyway, now that we’ve established that you’re all here hoping to see me crash and burn - and honestly, I don’t blame you, I like a bit of schadenfreude as much as anyone. Especially when I’m the punchline. Self-schadenfreude. There’s something kind of perverse about it. Almost masturbatory. Like the other week, my girlfriend caught me masturbating while watching her friend's Facebook, and so now I go to Masturbators’ Anonymous...

_ [for a moment, there’s silence; then knowing laughter, some applause.] _

Yeah, yeah. Had to get that in there. Anyway, that’s the last time you’ll hear that joke, because I fired the guy who wrote it! _[audience cheers] _And let’s be honest, none of you fuckers ever believed I had a girlfriend. _[laughter]_ It’s OK. I didn’t. Still don’t. Never will. _ [pause; some noises of sympathy from the audience. Richie makes a pacifying motion with his free hand.] _ No, it’s OK. It’s the stone cold truth. I, Richie Tozier, hereby solemnly declare that I have never had a single girlfriend, with the exception of my boyfriend’s mother. _ [confused laughter] _ No, no. I’m kidding, obviously. I would never have dated my boyfriend’s mother. She wasn’t really the kind of woman you settle down with, you know? More of a one time, casual thing. Her son, on the other hand… oof. Now, there’s a boy you look at and immediately want to wife. _ [more laughter, less confused]  
_

So, with that important information out of the way, for this next bit, I’ve enlisted the help of some of the nerds here to set up this massive photo screen behind me. _[he pauses, and laughs] _‘Photo screen’. Fuck, I sound about eighty. ‘Back in my day, we only had daguerrotypes, and if you wanted to make them bigger, you just had to stand real close.’ _[laughter]_ My friend Bill - this isn’t scripted, sorry, I just like to take any chance I can to rag on ol' Billy - he’s this super hot guy, right? Like, he looks like he’d be the guy who gets the girl at the end of literally every romcom ever made, except for the ones starring Ryan Gosling, because let’s be real, not even Bill can compete with that. He has this super floppy hair, like a fucking - like some dude who auditioned for the Backstreet Boys way back when, but didn’t get in because he wasn’t quite twinky enough. He’s a good looking dude, is what I’m saying. But don’t ask him to help you with technology, ever. The man’s a luddite. He literally works with, like, fucking fancy-ass cameras all day, but I shit you not, I receive an accidental text dictated from his Google assistant at least twice a day. I got one earlier, and it just said_ [he does his best Bill voice, which sounds more like he has a bad headcold]_ ‘can’t believe this fucking goddamn voice thing, how do I delete you? Why won’t you let me delete you? Fuck you, you asshole shit biscuit, delete, and don’t send - no!’ so of course I sent him a link to some hacking website where it tells you how to delete the voice thing but will also definitely kill your phone stone dead, and now I’m just waiting for him to bill me for a new phone. I once caught him trying to turn the page of his Kindle like an actual book. Like, open up the Kindle and find the next page. _[laughter]_ And that’s what I sound like right now. I sound like Bill fucking Denbrough. _[surprised laughter; _the _Bill Denbrough?]_ And actually, that works as a pretty neat segue, because behold:

_ [he gestures towards the screen at the back of the stage, which flickers to life at his direction to show a photograph of a younger Richie, aged about thirteen, with his friends; five boys and one girl. The girl, whose red hair is illuminated somewhat artistically by the early evening, is posing with one foot on a rock, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun, the archetypal explorer. The boys, including Richie, are all staring at her moon-eyed, expressions exaggerated for the photograph. The boy standing immediately next to Richie is glaring at Richie in what we’d now call an absolutely stonking example of side-eye, and is wearing bright red short shorts and a neon green fanny pack. It looks like Richie might have his elbow dug into the side of the boy, but it’s hard to tell from the angle of the photo.] _

If you can spot Bill Denbrough in that photo, you win absolutely nothing, honestly, because he has the _ exact same fucking face_.

_ [the audience coos at how cute kiddie-Bill is, and laughs. Richie nods.] _

Yeah. That asshole discovered the fountain of youth, and he won’t share it with us. Even though I'm ageing like fucking milk. Although in his defence, he definitely needs the extra time to work out how to write a decent ending to his fucking books. 'And then they told the clown that it was a clown, and it was so offended that it just died?' All right, Bill. Todorov would be rolling in his fucking grave._ [laughter]_ So yeah, that was us, back in the glory days, when we knew nothing of love or taxes. _[He leans forward conspiratorially]_ And you want to know a secret? One of those knobbly-kneed little turds is now my _ significant other._ Yeah, that’s right. Three guesses as to which one of those dweebs I fell madly in love with.

_ [laughter; some dude shouts out ‘is she hot now?’] _

She is, actually. My friend Ben is a lucky, lucky dude. But no, guess again._ [no-one guesses; some tittering laughter]_ If you guessed the skinny little fuckface next to me, the one who looks like a fucking Victorian ghost with a fanny pack, then you guessed right.

_[pause, then laughter. He shakes his head.]  
_

That’s not even a joke, it’s just the truth, which actually, when I come to think about it, is perhaps the biggest joke of my entire life. So there’s a fun paradox.

_ [another pause, then someone cheers. Someone else joins in, and then suddenly there’s applause. To those in the front row, it’s perhaps clear that Richie’s hand holding the mic is shaking slightly.] _

I know. Not only did I have my sexual awakening to my very best, very male friend, I had it to a guy who wore a fanny pack. A fanny pack! There is nothing less erotic than a fanny pack. It’s literally the antithesis of attractive. And let me tell you, it’s hard enough reconciling the fact that you’re thirteen years old, you live in the middle of Buttfuck Nowhere, population hetero, gaybashing capital of the northeast, and you’re as gay as Elton John’s farts, but then to have the dual realisation that you have _ awful taste_? _[laughter, more cheers]_ There can truly be nothing worse. I couldn’t at least have had my gay awakening to, like, a hot gardener or an errant underwear catalogue or something? No, it had to be my best fucking friend, who carried an inhaler with him at all times, despite the fact that he _ didn’t have_ _asthma,_ and was, at any given moment, more anti-histamine than human. Did it really have to be some little dickweed who was, like, three-foot nothing, weighed eight pounds soaking wet, swore twice as much as I did, and just happened to have the brownest eyes you ever did see? Oh, and did I mention, who also wore a fucking _ fanny pack_? _[laughter]_

The first time I looked at him and went all weak at the knees, he told me that he was going to fuck my mom so good that she needed painkillers. We were, like, ten. _[laughter]_ It’s true! OK, we were thirteen, but still. He was sorting through his fanny pack before school, just filling it with all this medical shit that he categorically did not need, including a truly obscene amount of painkillers that his mom insisted he take everywhere. His mom was a special kind of woman, and that’s all I’ll say on that. I was like, "dude, why does your mom make you take so many painkillers to school? Is she expecting you to get thrown off the roof or something?" And he was always kind of sensitive about the whole medical thing, so he glared at me and just said, without thinking, "it’s because your mom’ll need them after I’m done with her." _[shocked laughter]_ I know! And, like, to give you some context, a good 85% of our conversation at the time was just ‘your mom’ jokes. The other 15% was the word 'fuck'. Some of the Psychology grads amongst you may notice that a good 85% of my conversation is still ‘your mom’ jokes, and if you want to write some kind of thesis paper on that, you have my consent. But this particular joke he made, I must have looked taken aback at the _ ferocity _ of it, like, if you could execute someone with the force of a ‘your mom’ joke alone, I would have fallen down dead right there in one fell swoop. And he went super pale, and he was like, "oh my god, no, Richie, I meant because of the sex thing, not because I would beat her up! I didn’t think about how that would sound! I’d never lay a finger on your mom, Richie, not like that!" And I looked at him, and I said, "you wouldn’t lay a finger on her, huh?" and then you could just see all the fight drain from behind his eyes, and he said, in this really resigned voice, "you’d lay a finger on my mom, though, right?" and I was like, "fuck yeah, dude, six inches deep, high five," and he _ actually high fived me_. And that was when I knew he was my dream boy.

_ [audience laughs and applauds] _

Except at first, I totally didn’t know that at all. I looked at him in that moment, fanny pack strapped to his waist like fucking Excalibur, and I was like, oh shit. That’s making me feel all warm and tingly inside. Guess I have a fanny pack fetish! _[laughter]_ That's super weird, so totally on brand, I guess. They probably don't make porn for that. Do I have to make my own? Am I going to spend all my adult years sexually unfulfilled because I can’t find anyone to wear a fanny pack in a bedroom scenario? And then we got this super cool clubhouse with a hammock in it, which our friend built with his bare, _ thirteen year old _ hands - surprise to no-one, by the way, he’s an architect now. Ben Hanscom, he’s called, you may have heard of him._ [cheers]_ If you haven’t, then look him up. He’s all your wet dreams come true. Except for mine, obviously, because he didn’t own so much as a single fanny pack. _[laughter]_ Anyway, this hammock was basically the coolest thing ever, and accordingly I decided, completely fairly, in my view, to stake my claim. Except fanny pack fuckface decided that he had a prior claim - which he totally did _ not_, by the way; everyone knows the rules of Shotgun - and so whenever I was in the hammock, he just sort of wriggled his tiny, knobbly body into it along with me, and tried to annoy me into letting him have it. After a while he developed this new habit of shoving his feet in my face, and it always made me feel even more warm and tingly than the fanny pack did, and so I was like… OK, looks like I have a foot fetish, too._ [laughter]_ I thought to myself, well, I guess that’s kind of OK. That’s a normal fetish, right? I can totally deal with that. Everyone has feet. No biggie. Just don't talk about it at, like, Thanksgiving.

So, long story short, by the end of the year, I realised that I had a fetish for fanny packs, feet, rants about bacteria, inhalers, your mom jokes, baggy t-shirts and short shorts, skinny elbows and knobbly knees - seriously, you could slice your fucking hand open on his kneecaps - brown hair that curled just so, and also possibly, very likely, definitely penises. So that was a riot._ [laughter]_ You think it's funny? It's not! There's nothing funny about being sixteen - because this went on for _years_ \- practically giving yourself carpet burn on your dick because you can't stop jerking off to your dumb male best friend, and you just try buying lube in early '90s Derry, Maine. Except don’t try it if you want to keep all of your teeth in your head. That’s not even a joke, that’s an actual statement on the status of gay rights in early '90s Derry, Maine. Someone should go back in time and show them all, like, the footage of gay people getting legally married for the first time, or trans people being allowed to change their assigned gender, or, fuck, the viewing figures for RuPaul’s Drag Race. They’d all shit themselves, which is only half of what they deserve, frankly.

And hey, I’m going to get real for just a few seconds more here. I know, I know, you came here for the jokes, but indulge me for a minute. Picture kid Richie, thirteen years old at that point, with a face that was 50% front teeth and 50% bangs that my mom cut in so that I’d ‘look smart for the new school year’, and I’d just realised that not only was I a total homo, but I was in love with my best friend, and I couldn’t tell him. Because, if you recall, this was 1980s Derry, Maine. If anyone caught so much as a whiff of a gay rumour, that was it for you. Your locker would be covered in imaginative slogans like ‘cocksucker’, ‘faggot’, ‘AIDS homo’. Shit, this guy in the grade above me got jumped on the way to school because his mom washed his white shirt with something red and turned it pink, and he wore it anyway. They jumped him for that. A pink shirt! He got gaybashed because his mom was bad at laundry! And there was me, daydreaming about making out with my very male best friend and also very deliberately walking to school via this giant statue of Paul Bunyan that we have in Derry, because the sculptor paid a lot of attention to the bulge in his pants. Which, when I think about it now, is pretty homoerotic on Derry’s part. Putting a statue of ultimate gay bear icon, Paul Bunyan, in the centre of town? The only thing gayer is sucking cock. _[uncertain laughter]_ Cheap joke, sorry. Got to remind you whose show you're at. But anyway. Yeah, speaking of sucking, the whole thing just sucked. It really did.

_[He takes a deep breath in; his hand is still shaking]_

All my fellow homos among you - can I get a cheer for my fellow homos?_ [a decently loud cheer]_ That’s solidarity, folks. Your queer cheers sustain me. Anyway, you’ll all know what I mean when I say I used to literally be afraid of looking dudes in the eye. I was dead-ass convinced that every other guy in the world was, like, telepathic or something. I spent half my life terrified that people would drag those thoughts out of my head and put them out in public and flay me alive for them. Like, if I made eye contact with a guy, they’d totally be able to tell that I’d spent half an hour in the shower that morning thinking about dudes, and then they’d know that I was gay, and they’d beat me up. So I just didn’t look at any of them. For years, actually. And I’m a tall dude, like, I’m very aware that I look like I’ve been badly drawn in Microsoft Paint, and do you know how hard it is to not make eye contact when you’re this tall? It’s hard! Everyone can see that you’re looking at the floor! And there’s only so many times you can pretend to be recovering from pink eye before someone tries to call you a doctor! And then the doctor is a dude, and you can’t look at him either, and he’s like, “I need to look at your eyes, sir,” and you’re like, “I don’t… actually… have eyes… sorry.” _[laughter]_

And then I kind of blinked, and it was twenty years later, and it turned out that I hadn’t really looked at anyone in all that time. I didn’t even see my best friend for all those years. Like my brain was so scared of looking at him, because then he might actually see me, and he might not like what he saw. And then when I did see him again - oh hey, a callback to my big on-stage freakout! - I spent days doing the exact same shit I always did, which was to look anywhere but at him, and joke about, fucking, Winona Ryder, or whichever woman was on TV at the time who I knew I was supposed to be attracted to. And then, not to get, like, even more depressing, but there was an Incident in which a very Small Amount of Stabbing occurred, and then I kind of had to look at him. Like, actually look at him. With more than just my eyes. With my _soul._ Which is honestly the gayest thing one human has ever said to a crowd of other humans, but I'll take it. _[laughter]_ And hey, maybe all men except me really are telepathic, or maybe I was just the most obvious fuckhead this side of the moon, but he definitely saw me. Like, eyes, gay soul, everything. And luckily for me, he didn’t beat me up. So that was nice. And y’know, that same best friend is my super hot boyfriend now, so things could be worse. _[audience cheers]_

Whew, that’s enough of that. Let’s talk about my boyfriend some more. I really feel like I haven’t talked about my boyfriend enough._ [laughter, cheers]_ Hey, did you know I have a boyfriend now? Because I totally do! It’s so great. He’s so great. He’s also a complete and utter bag of dicks, but that’s my type, so it’s fine._ [more laughter]_ No, he really is horrid. The worst. I told him that I had my big gay awakening to him and his stupid fanny pack, because we’re officially boyfriends now and that means we don’t get to keep secrets from each other, except for the big stuff, like who drank the last of the wine and then put the empty bottle back in the wine rack, or who made an experimental juice that consisted of spinach, figs and quinoa and then left it all to fester in the sink, or who forgot to do our laundry before his boyfriend's office Christmas party and had to run to Target to buy us something presentable so that we didn’t have to turn up wearing stained graphic tees and pyjama pants, and we ended up having to wear matching Christmas jumpers with little festive pom poms where our nipples would be. _[laughter] _

None of those things were me, by the way. Absolutely not. My boyfriend would never testify against me, and so no jury would convict. I’m a responsible adult now, with a savings account and everything, which my boyfriend definitely didn’t set up for me after we were making out on the couch last month. It’s a complete coincidence that he just so happened to be reaching down to unzip my pants and show me a good time, and then he accidentally pulled out a huge wad of paperwork that I’d stuffed behind all the couch cushions, and found out that I hadn’t opened a single bank statement in over three years, and then gave me a very hard time instead. And I do mean that literally. Like, I hate myself so much for it, but hearing my very hot and very fiscally minded boyfriend talk passionately about investment and interest rates? Piques my interest rates, baby. _[laughter; someone wolf whistles, and Richie laughs.]_

Anyway, as I was saying, I told him about the whole fanny pack thing being my big gay awakening, and you know what he said? He looked me dead in the eye and he said, “cool. Mine was Bill.” _[laughter; applause]_. And you know, I’m _pretty_ sure he was kidding, but to this day, he won’t indulge my fanny pack kink, no matter how much I ask him. I have begged on bended knee and he won’t budge. I’ve even offered to wear one for him instead, you know, in case he’s just shy, but for some reason he’s not keen on that either. I think he might be worried that I’d pull off his trademark look better than him. That I’d look so sensual in his fanny pack, and _ only _ his fanny pack, that he just couldn’t handle it. That’s what I choose to tell myself, anyway. _[laughter; someone wolf whistles again, and Richie puts his hand to his chest, pretends to be flattered.]_

By the way, sorry in advance for all the gay jokes. They're just really easy to make. I don't know why I didn't come out earlier. I was tying one comedy hand behind my back! All this material I get to use now. You know, when I first told my manager I was gay, he was like, "is this a bit?" _[laughter] _Like, I'm so dedicated to my career, I've started a relationship with another man and now he's saved as 'Dream Boy' on my phone just so that I can expand my comedic repertoire. So obviously, I was like, "no, it's not a bit. I have not spent all morning on my knees just so that I get to make a blowjob joke on stage later." And then he hung up on me. _[laughter]_ And like, I get it. I know my material has historically appealed to the straight white male demographic, largely because that's been kind of my whole deal. Like, 'I'm Richie! I’m the straight white man next door!' That kind of skeevy guy who's lived there forever and definitely hasn't paid his rent in a few months and his garden is full of empty pizza boxes and beer cans and raccoons. But if you’re expecting me to just do one bit about my big gay awakening and then return to business as usual, I feel like I kind of have to take a shit on your expectations. Because, as we’ve already discussed, I’m not a straight white male. I am, in fact, black. Ha, no. Obviously. But I am gay. In case you hadn't got that yet.

_ [more cheers] _

I know! I was as surprised to hear it as anyone. _[laughter]_ Mostly because I'd spent, like, thirty years repressing it and it bubbled to the surface in a blistering tidal wave of trauma, and it still sounds really fucking bizarre to hear myself say it, but anyway. You know what, though? Being a gay dude is actually really fucking weird. At first, I was like, are you kidding me? Me, gay? It can’t be. Guys are gross! _[laughter]_ Objectively disgusting, just horrible. Every morning, when I look in the mirror to brush my teeth, I’m straight for a solid ten minutes. I have, like, body hair where hair definitely shouldn’t be, and I swear one of my nipples is higher than the other, and my dick just looks _ sad_, guys, honestly. Like, I want to read him some motivational quotes and tell him to cheer up. _[laughter]_ And I’m not unusually gross for a dude! We’re just horrid! I hate them. I hate all men. Except my boyfriend, of course. I just think he’s neat. But like, actually, he is very neat, which is at least eight of the reasons I like him so much.

He’ll absolutely murder me in my sleep for this - which will be easy for him, since we share a bed, on account of us being boyfriends, which I will never tire of saying, as you can probably tell - but he has a colour coded underwear drawer. _[laughter]_ I’m not kidding! He’s organised all his boxers from dark grey to light grey, in this perfect fucking gradient that wouldn’t look out of place in a homeware catalogue. It’s absolutely the gayest thing ever. Although when I called it a gaydient, he did threaten to leave me. And in the interest of full disclosure, I did initially have a joke about being anal in there, but he made me take it out, something about me being a puerile piece of shit, which I think is fair comment. So if you’re wondering why I didn’t go there - well, I did, but this guy’s already been through one divorce, so he could totally out-divorce me if he wanted to. I can’t take the risk._ [laughter]_ We’re not even married yet, but still. Got to keep these things in mind.

If anyone’s wondering about the title of this special, by the way - ha, I knew I’d have to explain it at some point, or people would just be like, ‘what do you mean, your boyfriend’s not gay? He’s fucking you. What could be gayer than that?’ Well, firstly, never assume whomst among us is the fucker and who is the fuckee, because that's a heteronormative view of queer sex, thank you very much. I learnt those words last week when I asked my boyfriend why he was wearing pink socks to bed. I'm enjoying taking all these shiny new words for a spin. It's like having a new haircut, but they make me look smart, not like a rejected Beatles member who fell into bad habits. Everything is heteronormative at the moment, but especially straight people. Ugh. The worst. _[laughter]_ Just kidding! Some of my best friends are straight. _[laughter; he winks]._ Or so they think.

Secondly, the answer to the question of what could be gayer is: tupperware. Don’t ask me why. It’s just intrinsically gay. Probably because it’s totally fucking transparent and loves a good party. So anyway, the title. Well, when I first came out to all my friends, I had this revelation. And that revelation was that I now had a new card to play. The gay card. _[laughter]_ It’s great! I spent all my life passing as a straight white man, which is, like, the pinnacle of privilege, and now I have this minority card that I get to trot out whenever I feel like it. My Uber’s cancelled? That’s homophobic. My friend is late for dinner? Great, never knew they were homophobic before. If they support gay rights, then they’ll arrive on time, goddamnit. I sleep through eight alarms and miss a super important meeting with my agent? Time! It’s so homophobic! _[laughter]_ And, like, to clarify, I would never do this seriously. I get that these issues are, like, Actual Things, and I feel like I should put it out there that time is, in fact, not homophobic. Society as a whole definitely is, on account of patriarchy and other terms that you didn't pay to hear me talk about. But not time itself. Uber, though? The jury’s still out on that one.

So one time we’re out at dinner together - and this is before we started dating, by the way - because he’s visiting LA for a couple days and _ obviously _ I’m going to invite him for dinner at literally the gayest place I know, which is Olive Garden - what, the breadsticks are totally phallic - and our waiter forgets to bring my side order, and I sigh at Eddie and I’m like, “damn, I didn’t know Olive Garden was so homophobic.” And then later on, it turns out that we’ve been talking for so long that they need to _[he makes finger quotations]_ ‘close the restaurant’ because the staff want to ‘go home’ to their ‘loving families’, and I say, “homophobia in action,” and he just kind of sighs resignedly, because I’ve been doing this bit all evening. And then we get back to my apartment, and I’m, like, rummaging around in my pockets to find my door key, but I can’t fucking find them among all the gum wrappers and coins and receipts for multipacks of Doritos. So I’m like, “fuck, I can’t believe how homophobic my keys are being,” and then - and _ then! _ \- he looks at me, fixes me with this clear-eyed stare, and he says, “well, actually, my foot hurts like a bitch from when you tried to pull my chair out for me and ran it right over my fucking toe, and I really, really want to get inside your fucking apartment and sit down, so I guess your keys are being pretty biphobic.” _[audience cheers]_

I know! Just socked me right in the jaw with that one! What is it the youthful gays say these days? My wig, it was snatched. Someone came over to me and physically removed a wig from my head that I didn’t even know I was wearing, and ran off with it. _[laughter]_ And I was like, “what? Where the fuck did that come from?” And he’s like, “from months of intensive therapy like you should clearly have been having, idiot,” and then he called me a fuckwad and we made out for like twenty minutes, it was awesome.

_ [audience laughs, claps; Richie grins now, wide and open, not shaking any more.] _

So yeah, hence the title of the show. Because, as Eddie is at pains to tell me almost constantly, bi erasure is real, and being in a relationship with me - with _ me_, hoo boy! - doesn’t negate the fact that he also really, really likes vagina._ [laughter]_ He’s also at pains to tell me almost constantly that this analogy is - hang on. _[He digs into his pocket, brings out a piece of folded paper, reads from it.]_ ‘Bioessentialist and cissexist’. Which are words that he uses in casual conversation, because he’s fucking smart. But yeah, I take his point, and I have to be honest, I kind of love that he’s only been out as bi for, like, a year, and he’s basically a walking compendium of queer theory. He’s amazing. I love him so much._ [someone wolf whistles; Richie laughs and flips them off]_ I do! He’s, like, 5 foot 9 of queer rage and polo shirts, and I think that’s neat.

You know, when I was pitching this show to my manager, he told me that I could - and I quote - "do whatever the fuck you think it takes to save your damn career, but don’t spend four hours waxing lyrical about Eddie, Richie, for fuck's sake." And I’m starting to realise that I’ve totally ignored him. Sorry, Leo. Let me see._ [He takes out the same piece of paper as before, reads it]_ I wrote down some ideas for some other non-threatening gay material, approved by my manager. Hmm. Oh, OK. Scarves! _[someone groans]_ That’s a gay thing. Apparently. According to my manager, who is a straight man, but anyway. Scarves! What a thrilling subject to riff on. Here we go. Since I came out, my mother seems weirdly convinced that I have, like, Opinions on scarves. Which I don’t, by the way. I mean, look at me. Do I look like the kind of man who has an opinion on scarves? Of course I don’t. I look like the kind of man whose opinions on clothing extend to, can I wear it? Should I wear it? Jury’s out? OK!_ [laughter]_ Anyway, despite the fact that I still dress like an undercover cop trying to get information on a drug ring at a high school, she keeps asking for my fucking opinion on scarves. The last time I wore a scarf was when I was 9 and she told me to wrap up warm, that’s how little I give a shit about scarves, so whenever she asks, I just think back to all the scarves she’s made me wear, and kind of recreate those. "Ooh, how about a lovely woollen scarf, dark blue, so that it perfectly matches the colour of my suit at Stanley’s bar mitzvah back in 1989?" _[laughter]_ It’s my only point of scarf reference! But she seems happy. She’s like, "what scarf should I wear with this turquoise chiffon blouse when I go to Karen’s, fucking, cream cake fundraiser next week?" And I’m like, I don’t know, maybe a really lumpy burgundy one knitted by my dead grandmother? And she just accepts it. Because I’m gay now, so I must be an expert on fashion. _[He gestures down at himself]_ Clearly.

So yeah. Turns out that scarves? Not actually a gay thing! Maybe nothing is a gay thing! Maybe everything is a gay thing! Maybe _[he reads from the paper again] _all gay things are just heteronormative constructs and an attempt to homogenise queer culture into something singular and palatable for the straight hegemony! _[someone whoops] _

And on that fashion note, can I just say - someone had the audacity to call me a queen once. _[He stares at the audience, outraged; they laugh]_ I know. Me! A queen! I was just standing in the doorway of my local hardware store, holding hands with my boyfriend, who was engaged in a heated yet fruitful discussion with the cashier about different sizes of nuts and bolts, and this massive guy just barges into me from behind and he’s like, “move, queens!” Honestly, I was offended beyond belief. Not on my behalf, obviously, but on behalf of all the queens who work hard at their craft to earn that title, and I just got handed it by some meathead in a muscle tee at Joe’s Hardware Store, even though I look like what would happen if humans evolved from weasels instead of monkeys, and were also homeless. _[laughter]_ A queen, me? I wish! I'm not even a duchess. More like a feudal serf. _[more laughter] _

So, yeah, I don’t really fit in too well with what the youth would call the queer community. I just look too much like the kind of guy who picks up a shirt from the floor in the morning, sniffs it under the armpits, shrugs resignedly, then puts it on. Probably because I am that kind of guy, much to Eddie’s constant dismay. _[laughter]_ But I did try, you know. To do the whole fitting in thing. Once, just once. At college. Before I was out. Before coming out was even really an option, honestly. There was this group of gay dudes, and they met twice a week at this coffee shop on campus for, I don't know, a gay book club or something, and I would see them every week or so, because I used to go to that coffee shop and do all my assignments the day before they were due, fuelled by twenty five shots of espresso and fear. _[laughter]_ And I always kind of envied those guys, in my closeted little brain, because they were so fearless, and so… gay. And, like, I was super gay too, but whatever the opposite of fearless is, that’s what I was. And I have no idea why, even to this day, but one afternoon I just kind of thought, fuck it, I’m gay as shit, I can talk to those guys, and so I went over to them, 6ft 4 of lanky, stealth gay, clad in an orange Hawaiian shirt and, fuck, flip flops, I think, and I said “what are you reading?” and they just fucking scattered like leaves on the Autumn wind. I think they thought I was more likely to queer bash them than be, y'know, queer. I was quite flattered, actually. I don't have the best muscle definition as it is, but back then I just looked like a bean sprout. I was like, 9ft tall, and if I turned to the side I was invisible. So for them to think I had the upper body strength to queer bash them was weirdly nice of them. _[laughter] _The experience of being summarily dismissed from a community I kind of belonged to but who had every right to fear my presence was less nice, though. But my boyfriend thinks I'm cute, and that's all that matters. _[laughter]_ Oh, sorry, did I say I was done talking about him? Well, joke's on you, because I'm not! I never am! It's an affliction! If being obsessed with my boyfriend is a sickness, then I don't want to be cured! _[laughter; a few people wolf whistle] _

Yeah, turns out that I'm just the bonafide worst now. Absolute hell at parties. Every time I meet a new person, I spend two hours waxing rhapsodic about my boyfriend and forget to tell them my own fucking name. It’s becoming a problem. I’m probably going to have to change all my tour materials to just say ‘Eddie’s Boyfriend’, because that’s how I introduce myself to everyone now. 'Eddie's Boyfriend: Don't Call My Boyfriend Gay.' That's the show now. It’s not even just new people. My friends all hate me. Even more than usual. _[some sympathetic laughter__] _Back at school, we had this thing. If I was being more of a fuckhead than normal - which was a pretty high bar, got to be honest - we had a kind of conversational safe word. I’d say something that was totally on brand but admittedly, erm, uncouth - like, I'd stop to tie my shoelaces and I'd fall behind the group, and someone would ask me if I was coming and I'd say something like, “yeah, in spurts all over your mother's face!” _[disgusted laughter] - _and then they did the face people do when they're stuck in an elevator with me - you know the one, looks a bit like they can tell you’ve stepped in a piece of shit, and then you look at your shoes and they’re totally clean and you realise that _you're _ the piece of shit - and my friends would say “beep beep, Richie,” and it basically meant ‘Jesus Christ, stop talking, everything you say makes me want to burn my ears off.’ _[sympathetic laughter; Richie shakes his head] _

No, no, I deserved it. I was an asshole. And they still use it all the time, but nowadays it's more likely to be because I've been talking about my boyfriend too much. It's like a faucet and I can't turn it off, and I don't just mean my… _ [laughter] _ The dick jokes make themselves these days, it's great. It’s like I’ve trained you all to have a Pavlovian response to a suggested dick joke. That’s science, baby. Anyway, I was out for brunch the other day, because when you get your gay card you have to agree to attend a certain number of mandatory brunches every quarter or they send RuPaul to your house and he reads you to filth, and I was telling the guy I was at brunch with all about my boyfriend. And sure, maybe I was overdoing it a bit, but in my defence, he is the absolute love of my life. I would storm the Bastille for him. Possibly even Azkaban. I’m his number one fan, all that jazz. So sue me if sometimes I get a bit carried away. I was just talking about my boyfriend to this guy, telling him all about the time when we were twelve and we were riding our bikes near the quarry and I fell off and grazed my shin, and it hurt like a motherfucker but I stoically bore the pain, because the thought of crying in front of Eddie was, at that point, the absolute stuff of nightmares, even though he had definitely seen me piss myself and cry hysterically in Miss Roach’s class in first grade, and I asked him if he had any bandaids in that fanny pack of his, and I shit you not, he opened up his fanny pack and pulled out _ another, smaller fanny pack _ which was full of bandaids of different sizes, some of which had dinosaurs on and some of which, I believe, were Power Rangers themed, and I think that was probably the moment I fell in love. _[laughter]_

And I’m telling all this to this guy over brunch, and he’s kind of looking at his watch in this way that he clearly thinks is discreet but totally isn’t, and yawning with his mouth closed, which is very polite but also does not disguise the fact that he’s getting absolutely sick to the goddamn teeth of my incredibly gay shit, and eventually he just throws his hands up in the air and he’s like, “Richie, you’ve been talking about me to my face for like 40 minutes, you know I was _ there_, right?” _[laughter]_ He’s my dream.

The really funny thing about the whole debacle is that I was probably the last person, after Eddie, who realised that I was totally gone for him. When we started dating, I was, like, super worried about telling our friends. I was like, shit, what if they think we’ve been hiding something from them for two decades? What if they don’t approve and we have to change our names and get less famous friends? _[laughter; someone cheers 'Bill!'] _But it was all fine. When I told my friend Stanley, he sort of frowned at me and he was like, “yeah, dude, I know? You've been dating since high school.” And I just kind of stared at him and I was like, “what the fuck, Stanley! No we haven't! This is very new and very exciting for me!” and he frowned even more, which is a real Stanley talent, just sort of layering frowns upon frowns like Leo DiCap layered that twink's dreams in Inception, and he was like, “but you flirted. All. The. Time.” And I was like, “literally name one time, Stanley,” and then he named about eighty six times off the top of his head, it was awful. _[laughter] _And so I was like, “we’ve been dating since high school, and you never thought to tell us?” and he said, “well, I kind of assumed you already knew,” which is fair enough, really. _[laughter] _

Don’t get me wrong. My boyfriend can be nice to me sometimes. Usually when he wants something reaching from a high shelf, because he’s a pipsqueak. _[laughter]_ Seriously, I’ll be in my office - because I’m the kind of guy who has an office now, what the _ fuck_, I legitimately hate myself - and there’ll be a knock on the door, and it’s Eddie, and he’ll be all, “babe, you know how I love you?” And I’m like, “well, you could tell me more often, but OK. What can’t you reach?”_ [laughter]_ And then he’ll frown - and it’s so cute! Cute, cute! - and say, “it’s not always about me not being able to reach something, Richie. Sometimes I just want to tell you that I love you, because healthy communication is very important in a relationship, and I really want you to know that I value and appreciate you every day,” and then I’m like, “it’s the casserole dish isn’t it, babe,” and I get it down for him and then he cooks me dinner and we make out for like three hours. It’s so good.

And you know, not to get serious again - really! I won’t do that to you again, I swear - but it’s so great. If little preteen Richie could see middle-aged Richie, or three-quarter-life Richie if I’m being honest, thanks to my truly appalling diet, I think he’d be pretty OK with it. And I don’t even just mean, like, the whole Eddie thing. I think he’d look at the world that he got to grow into and live in, and I think he’d like what he saw. I’ll let you into something, before I go. We went to Pride this year, me and Eddie, and sure, it was full of corporate bullshit that made Eddie go bright red in that adorably angry way of his, where his eyes go all crinkly at the edges and I just about want to frame him and put him on a shelf, but there was a community, too. Thousands and thousands of people like young Richie, some of whom were scared but went anyway, and some of whom weren’t scared at all. Because they’d grown up with the fear and they’d chosen to kick it in the fucking ballsack. So, yeah. I think 1980s Richie would be just fine with it. He’d probably want, like, six more abs and Laser surgery, but you don’t always get what you want. _ [laughter; although some people are audibly sniffling] _ Although in this case, I totally did, and his name is Eddie, and he wants you all to know that although he’s my boyfriend, he’s not gay, actually. _ [cheers] _

Anyway, that’s all from me! I’ve been Richie Tozier, and I’ve been, and will continue to be, very gay. You’ve all been great, and statistically speaking, about one in ten of you have also been very, very gay. Goodnight!

_ [audience whoops and cheers; the stage lights fade to black. As the lights dim, Richie waves to the audience and walks offstage, where he’s met by a group of six people cheering his name, except for one, who says ‘nice show, dickwad’.] _

**Author's Note:**

> So. Writing this was weirdly cathartic. Although I am (obviously) not Richie Tozier, being not a 40 year old male comedian but a 27 year old female author, something about that storyline spoke to me. Something about the fear of not being able to come out, of being rejected by your own community, of tragedy bringing truth to the forefront. I don't know. I just love these dumb boys and I want them to have the love story they deserved. And 'your mom' jokes, obviously. Maybe 'your mom' can be our 'always'.
> 
> Also, how many times can one person use the phrase 'fanny pack' in one fic? I'm too afraid to count.


End file.
